Horse Heaven Canyon 2024

I had fun last year hiking in the San Rafael Swell. I realized when re-reading Steve Allen's original Canyoneering book for ideas that I had never done any hikes in the Moroni Slopes area. A number of the hikes looked pretty technical, but I spotted one that didn't sound too bad — Horse Heaven Canyon. It was “only” class 4; I actually hiked once with Allen and I had managed to do some routes that he deemed to be class 4.

I put the trip on the calendar for April 20-21. The weather was stormy on the way down, but it was fine when I reached the campsite and met Greg. We got to see a very fine sunset over the Wasatch Plateau and Thousand Lake Mountain.

The first hour and 20 minutes or so of the hike are in a relatively wide, open draw, with grass and sagebrush and cow pies.

This scenery ends quite abruptly at a massive pour-off. We stopped there and enjoyed the view down into the gorge. Allen's book describes a tortuous route around the right side of the pour-off to get down into the canyon. I had scouted the route using Google satellite view and luckily I had gotten most of it right. We climbed the loose slope to the right of the pour-off up to a cliff band, then walked a precarious desert bighorn trail along the edge of a cliff to reach an open area that drains to a notch. There were a few cairns, but they weren't particularly obvious, and we still had to do a fair amount of route finding.

After dropping through the notch, we cut right above a pile of huge boulders, then cut left to cross a draw. This section was annoying because of piles of ball-bearing-like concretions that were scattered over the slabs. After crossing the draw, we continued left on a cliff band until we found a way down through it on loose, slidy crap. We then followed a faint use trail (with cairns) that descended steeply to the right, which took us down to the bottom of the draw.

I wanted to hike back up to the pour-off. This turned out to be fun and pretty straightforward. There were stretches of narrows with minor obstacles, and lots of lovely peach-colored slickrock. The pour-off is pretty impressive from the bottom, and it looked to me like a lot of water comes over the top in big storms. That waterfall would make a great video, but I wouldn't want to be down there to shoot it.

Going downcanyon, we passed through a pleasant section of narrows and came out into a wider gorge. We took a fairly long detour to the right to get around one pour-off. The next pour-off was not far below this one. We again went around on the right, coming up through a side crack with some steep friction climbing. The crux was a steeply inclined slab with a substantial drop below it. Greg and I decided that this was above our pay grade, and we turned around.

We had lunch in the narrow section below the first pour-off, then headed back out. The climb back up to the notch didn't seem too bad to me, since we'd already found the route, but I tripped once on the final exposed ledge and that gave me the willies. Both Greg and I admired the bighorn track on the opposite side of the gorge, which followed a long narrow ledge right over a big vertical drop.

The hike back to camp was a bit of a slog. The wind came up when we got back and we set up chairs and tables between our vehicles to shield ourselves from the blast.

go to the Horse Heaven Canyon photo gallery

The next morning, both of us had feet that were too sore to do a big hike. Instead, we drove over to the Segers Hole overlook, just a few miles away from camp. The overlook is a spectacular place to see the San Rafael Reef from one of the high points of the Moroni Slopes. The morning light was very nice too.

We also had good views down into Cable Canyon. We spotted a bighorn in the uppermost section. We could see Factory Butte and the Henry Mountains in the distance.

I stopped on the way back to I-70 to admire the volcanic intrusions at West Cedar Mountain, and the bizarre landscapes in the Mussentuchit badlands. I should have taken more photos — too bad.

go to the Segers Hole photo gallery

I thought that my feet might hold up for a short hike like the Rochester Indian Rock art site. I'd never been there before and I'd heard that it was pretty cool. The site is on Muddy Creek on the west side of the Swell, not far from the hamlet of Moore.

As it turns out, the Rochester panels are indeed really, really cool. They include many things that I don't see regularly depicted in rock art — dogs, bears, birds, spiders, dragon-like critters, trees and a big rainbow.

I ran into Steve and Teri on the trail. They'd signed up for the trip but bowed out after realizing that Teri's knees wouldn't handle the long hike. Utah is a small world.

go to the Rochester Panel photo gallery